An attorney for former gymnastics coach Richard Carlson proposed during a USA Gymnastics disciplinary hearing last month that Carlson would admit to having sex with world champion gymnast Marcia Frederick when she was a teenager and accept a lifetime ban from the sport in return for Frederick and USA Gymnastics not making the ban public, Frederick told the Southern California News Group Monday.

Nearly a month after the hearing USA Gymnastics still has not informed her of a decision in the case, Frederick said.

Frederick, who at 15 in 1978 became the first U.S. woman to win a World title gymnastics, told SCNG earlier this year that Carlson, her coach at a Connecticut gymnastics academy, had her perform sex acts on him for two years starting in 1979 and only weeks after she turned 16. Frederick also alleged that at the time Muriel Davis Grossfeld, a three-time Olympian and U.S. national team coach who ran the gymnastics academy and was Carlson’s boss, initially ignored the gymnast’s allegations against Carlson.

Carlson has denied having sex with Frederick.

But Frederick said approximately an hour into the March 19 hearing held via teleconference, Carlson’s attorney offered a proposal: Carlson would acknowledge having consensual sex with Frederick (the age of consent in Connecticut at the time was 16), and agree to a lifetime ban in return for Frederick signing a confidentiality agreement prohibiting her from commenting about Carlson and USA Gymnastics not making the ban public. USA Gymnastics currently lists banned members on its website.

“I rejected it immediately,” Frederick said Monday. “It made me sick. It was disgusting.

“If somebody had listened to me 40 years ago maybe Nassar wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did,” Frederick continued, referring to former U.S. Olympic and USA Gymnastics national team physician Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexual assault earlier this year in two different Michigan cases, and is alleged to have sexually abused more than 150 former gymnasts and young athletes including five Olympic champions.

“I will never be part of an agreement where a coach (admits) to having sex with a teenager but gets a deal where no one knows. My job now is to protect other kids from this happening to them. What good is it to have a banned list if you’re not going to make it public?”

After she rejected the proposal Frederick said Carlson and his attorney changed their stance.

“(Carlson) said he barely remembers me, that he had no sex with me whatsoever, never happened,” Frederick said.

A former gymnast told USA Gymnastics that Carlson confessed in the early 1990s to having sex with Frederick, she said.

USA Gymnastics and Carlson’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Frederick, who was listening to the hearing via the phone from Massachusetts with her attorney, said at several points she and others became disconnected from the call. At another point one of the USA Gymnastics panel members had to leave the hearing and resume participating on the call while she was driving in her car.

Frederick said the hearing took an emotional toll on her, especially when she heard Carlson’s voice for the first time in decades.

“I vomited,” she said.

The wait on a decision has also put a strain on her, she said.

During a 2011 interview with USA Gymnnastics investigators in the Don Peters sexual abuse case, Frederick first told the organization that the sport’s sex abuse issue extended beyond Peters. Peters, the 1984 U.S. Olympic team coach, was under investigation following reporting by the Orange County Register that he had sex with three teenage gymnasts. Peters was Frederick’s coach when she won her world title. Frederick said she was not sexually abused by Peters. During the 2011 interview a USA Gymnastics investigator told Frederick that the organization was only focused on Peters at that time.

Carlson continued to coach young female gymnasts in the Long Island area until at least 2015 and instruct at USA Gymnastics-sanctioned clinics for promising young female athletes until at least 2012, according to USA Gymnastics reports and interviews.

Frederick filed a formal complaint about Carlson with USA Gymnastics on September 12, 2015. The complaint came two days after then USA Gymnastics chief executive Steve Penny was informed that Nassar was retiring from his position with the organization.

Penny confirmed Frederick’s complaint about Carlson in a December 17, 2015 letter obtained by SCNG.

“USA Gymnastics takes complaints of this nature very seriously and will investigate this matter,” Penny wrote.

“We anticipate that the investigation will be completed in approximately 90 days,” Penny added in the letter. Penny was forced to resign in March 2017 under pressure from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Frederick said she was told by USA Gymnastics during the March 2018 hearing that the organization would submit a summary of the case within a week of the hearing and have a ruliing shortly thereafter. Nearly a month later she still has not been informed of any such submission, she said.

“It’s like (the Simon & Garfunkel song): silence like a cancer grows,” Frederick said. “And in (gymnastics) the cancer just keeps growing and growing.”

Scott M. Reid is a sports enterprise/investigative reporter for the Orange County Register. He also covers Olympic and international sports as well as the Los Angeles’ bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. His work for the Register has led to investigations by the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Department of Education, the California Legislature, and the national governing bodies for gymnastics and swimming. Reid's 2011 reporting on wide spread sexual abuse within USA Gymnastics and the governing body's failure to effectively address it led to Don Peters, coach of the 1984 record-setting Olympic team, being banned from the sport for life. His reporting also prompted USA Gymnastics to adopt new guidelines and policies dealing with sexual abuse. Reid's 2012 and 2013 reporting on sexual abuse within USA Swimming led to the banishment of two top level coaches. Reid has won 11 Associated Press Sports Editors awards for investigative reporting since 1999. He has also been honored by APSE for game writing, and enterprise, news, and beat reporting. He was an Investigative Reporters and Editors award finalist in 2002 and 2003. Prior to joining the Register in 1996, Reid worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Times Herald. He has a B.A. in the History of the Americas from the University of Washington.